Page:Cricket, by WG Grace.djvu/122

 Gentlemen by 38 runs, chiefly owing to the magnificent batting of Tom Hearne, who scored 122 not out in the second innings.

The return match at the Oval was no better, but the Gentlemen turned the tables, and won by 98 runs.

The South v. North, at Lord's, on the 2nd July, was a miserable failure. There were only a few players in the North team that could be called first-class, and the match was robbed of all interest. The North scored 95 and 65, to the South's single innings of 203, and the spectators who witnessed it did not hesitate to speak out about the conduct of the absent northern players.

I cannot say that I played a very important part with the bat in any of these three matches. In the first and second I scored 77 runs for four innings; in the third I made 19 in my single innings. But I met with fair success with the ball in both matches against the Players, obtaining six wickets in the first and nine in the second.

I have often been asked if I had much faith in myself before I commenced my big innings of 224 not out for England v. Surrey, at the Oval, on the 30th July of that year. My memory is a blank in that respect. I was a little over eighteen years of age at the time, and the years that followed were busy ones; and that particular match, and one or two others, have become dim memories. I know I travelled up to town the same morning, and felt slightly nervous the first over or two; everything afterwards I have forgotten, except the shouting which followed at the end of the innings, late in the afternoon of the second day. And I remember Mr. V. E. Walker, the captain of the England team, was kind enough to let me off the last day to compete in the 440 yards' hurdle-race of the National Olympian Association Meeting at the Crystal Palace, which I won in I minute 10 seconds over 20 hurdles.